Last day in London

July 3
The weather on our last day in London was probably the worst of all our days here. We started the morning with the super exciting task of doing laundry, and then headed off to the British museum to try again (we had gone earlier this week, but we're too tired from walking around to really enjoy it. The pictures here are from both days, so partway through we will be in different clothes. It was just easier to put them all together.

This is the main entrance hall, and every time I go, I love it. Even when it's dreary outside, the ceiling in here makes everything so bright.


My dad has pounded into my brain that pictures without people in them are a little silly and pointless. If I'm not in the picture, I'd do just as well to buy a postcard. The thing is, it's hard to get pictures with people in the mum, especially around something as popular as the Rosetta stone. So I went for the next best thing. If you look closely, you can see a reflection of Dane and me in the glass.



Dane in front of a really old wall. :)





I don't even remember what these are, but again, I liked the reflection. Dane is smiling in the middle.



These vases made me excited for two reasons: 1, it reminded me of our cruise, and 2, it got the muses' song from Hercules stuck in my head for the the next hour or so.






And here's the back (which really only makes sense if you read the description in the middle picture).




When we sat down to rest, we were both creeped out a little by the
look this statue was giving us.



At the top of these stairs there was a special exhibit that we could not photograph of all things relating to horses. My favorite piece was a poem that was written in Arabic calligraphy in the shape of a horse.


This must have been in a section that I could take pictures of. That or this is contraband.



The mummy room is a must-see if you ever go to the British museum. it's always very crowded, but the curators did a good job of having information to educate visitors about mummification, and included several CAT scans and images that show how they study mummies without unwrapping them.


Dane couldn't decide if he was more fascinated or more freaked out by the fact that he was so close to a dead body (especially one dead as long as this woman).


It is hard to see in the picture, but these are all mummified internal organs. I believe that the top right sections is a pair of lungs, and the bottom middle is a uterus and fallopian tube specimen (plus, it seems, something else, but I'm no doctor).








These are mummified crocodiles! And cats, back behind me.


This is a baboon.


And a better view of the cat mummies.


Ok, this is an example of how humans sometimes think they know everything and it turns out centuries later they are wrong. Rich people were made into mummies, but poor people were buried a different way. Their bodies were buried unwrapped in a pit and covered with desert sand. They might have a few possessions buried with them, like these pots and tools.


The dry sand preserved the body so well that there is still hair on this person's head, and the skin is largely intact.


Eventually, they started burying people in baskets and wooden coffins, thinking that would do a better job of keeping the body safe from decay. Here is what those bodies look like now.





Of course, because air and moisture were there, the bodies decomposed in a way that they could not when encased in the sand.

This is the royal library of Ninevah. I'm glad that my books are a little lighter than these.


This picture is really hard to see, but it is a bog body. They keep the lighting on this exhibit very low to protect it. Basically, bodies that are thrown in a bog for burial are preserved much like mummies because the high acidity of the bog doesn't allow bacteria to grow. Usually being thrown in the bog was a sort of punishment, denying a person a proper burial, but there were also practices of sacrifice that ended with putting the body in a bog.






I found this it be pretty funny. I included a picture of the description.







Tis is a 16th century grenade launcher.



We couldn't leave without visiting a room dedicated to the history of money. :)





It's hard to see, but this is a coin that the previous picture was talking about. it has the words Votes for Women stamped into it.



If you are ever in London and find yourself needing a meal an Paddington station, you must go to this Lebanese restaurant at the corner of Praed and London Streets. It is called Ya Hala, and it is AMAZING! Everything we ate was incredible. I kept thinking that the next dish could not live up to my expectation set by the dish before, but I was wrong.









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